Teteatete
by Alidiabin
Summary: Laura and Colette talk about nude photographs and Joe. Tag to 'Truth or Dare', and sequel to 'Girl Talk'


**Title: **Tête-à-tête  
**Fandom: **Pan Am**  
Author: **Alidiabin**  
Words: **1,015**  
Disclaimer: **I own nothing**  
Warnings/Spoilers/Rating: ** none || Up to 1x07 which should have been 1x08 || None. **  
Parings/Characters: **Colette Valios, Laura Cameron, hints at Laura/Joe.  
**Summary: **Set after 'Truth and Dare' Colette and Laura talk about nude photographs and Joe. Sequel of sorts to "Girl Talk".  
**Notes:** This follows the timeline that 'Romance Languages' (1x13) should have been 1x07 as it was in production.

_**Tête-à-tête**_

Laura flopped down onto her couch. It had been an eventful forty-eight hours. She had revealed to her sister and friends that she had taken nude photographs, much to her sister's disappointment. She had also met Joe, who perhaps in another place, another time or maybe another world, they could have had more than just one afternoon together. That one perfect afternoon they had together had been truly wonderful and as Laura reflected back on it, she deemed that would not have had it any other way.

A loud knock on the door interrupted her musings. Laura assumed that it was Maggie returning from Mike's apartment still in the previous evening's clothes and smelling of intimacy.

"Bonjour," a familiar voice that was not Maggie called through the door.

Laura opened the door and was greeted with Colette's warm smile. The French woman held up a scrubbing brush and some foreign cleaning concoction.

"I came to help clean up. Many hands make light work especially when we are all a little bit hungover," she declared as Laura let her in, to the already clean apartment. "It seems somebody beat me to it."

"Joe cleaned up, before I even got up," Laura reported. Colette's face formed an 'o' and her eyebrows moved up above her dark eyes.

"Joe the sailor from Montana," Colette asked, leaving his race of his description. She admitted that she had found the young man handsome herself, but he was ultimately too young for her tastes.

"Mississippi," Laura corrected her French friend.

"Did he stay the night?" Colette asked innocently.

"On the couch," Laura admitted shakily.

"Okay," Colette replied, her suspicions that the young sailor and the young stewardess had shared a bed were quickly vanquished "Seeing as he has done my job for me, I will be off."

"But we did sleep together," Laura declared as Colette headed to the door. The revelation caused the French woman to pivot and turn back to the young American with a slight smile.

"You did," Colette prompted.

"In Kate's apartment," Laura answered. Colette started laughing. "Don't tell her, she is still upset with me about the nude photographs,"

"You're secret is safe with me, and I think she is just concerned about the photographs. It would not be a good look for a Pan Am stewardess." Colette replied, "Besides, I am sure they are better than this painting there is of me."

"Somebody painted you," Laura asked curiously, as she moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on, if Colette was going to dispense more her life lessons it best be over coffee, especially as both of them were nursing hangovers.

"When I was nineteen," Colette declared, "Yvette one of the other girls in the orphanage wanted to go and see her boyfriend in Paris, so she used me as her cover. I do not even remember what story we told the Nuns but they seemed to trust me. I was left alone in Paris, while Yvette went to find her Prince Charming. I wandered for a while, enjoying Paris, the smell and the little things. Then it began to get dark and started raining, so I searched for a place to stay dry. I ended up in this club La Placette."

"That famous one, Maggie was going on about," Laura asked. Colette nodded.

"It was a bit different before it got famous, it was more of a place for _artistes_," she responded emphasising the last word. "I did not have much money for a drink, but this painter called Jean-Pierre came to my rescue. He was a surrealist."

"A surrealist!" Laura exclaimed, Colette's story was getting more interesting by the sentence. She tried to picture a surrealist painting of Colette but nothing she imagined seemed to fit.

"He fed me drinks, told me I was beautiful and eventually persuaded me to be his model." Colette continued, "If I had not had so many drinks, I probably would not have agreed to be naked."

Laura spat out her coffee. Colette giggled, at the time she had not found what had happened so funny but now that she had hindsight she could appreciate how much of a good story it had become.

"Of course it came out looking much too orange, I had four noses and another part of my anatomy was repeated too," Colette responded, as she remembered the painting being revealed to her, it had not been what she had expected far from it. "Jean-Pierre eventually fell asleep and I made my great escape stealing a bottle of his most expensive champagne. I found Yvette at the train station; her boyfriend had broken her heart. So we shared the champagne on the train journey home."

Laura erupted into a fit of giggles as she imagined as less graceful Colette rushing across Paris.

"I can't believe you did that," Laura replied between laughs. "Does Kate know?"

"No," Colette responded, "And in light of how she reacted to your photographs it will not be a story I tell her. I think I told Bridget though."

Laura grew quiet; Bridget was this ghost that her sister and her friends often talked about but she had no understanding of this figure that had been present in all their lives, and often felt like she was not good enough to replace her.

"She is going to kill me," Laura cried. "She is always telling me to be more independent but does not like it when I do."

"Were they done tastefully?" Colette asked, hoping for a positive answer.

"I think," she said with a shrug, "And he promised he would not show anyone."

"Then is should be fine," Colette assured her friend, "Now, do tell me about Joe?"

"What about him?" Laura asked with a slight smile.

"I would like to know how you two ended up sleeping together in Kate's apartment," Colette admitted. Curiosity had gotten the better of the French woman, possibly because it had been months since she had been intimate with anyone.

"Well," Laura began as Colette poured them both another cup of coffee.


End file.
